A Descriptive Study of Directive and Commissive Speech Acts Used by University Level Students

Abstract

Speech act spells out a function in communication acquired from someone’s utterances. This study investigated how the directive and commissive speech acts help university-level students for their effective learning and how they structure it. The researcher used the technique of classroom observation while the lessons would also be audio-recorded. The Data had collected from students interacting with their teacher in a university classroom. Most of the directive speech acts had got from the teacher while students were producing requests, invitations, demands, promises, begging, etc. The study aimed to explain the context of using the directives and commissive speech acts. This research was executed under the descriptive qualitative method while the researcher observed and analyzed the data collected from a university classroom. The collected data had analyzed against the structure of the two -speech acts directives and commissive to analyze the data. Hence, the researcher found that most of the directive speech acts were structured by the teachers, and most of the commissive speech acts were structured by the students. The researcher also found how the speech acts helped their effective learning.